Books
Lili Anolik
Didion & Babitz
Lili Anolik is a journalist who enjoys writerly gossip, and so, dear reader, am I. Didion & Babitz is Anolik’s dual biography of Los Angeles counterculture chroniclers Joan Didion and Eve Babitz and, whatever else it may be, it is indubitably literary gossip of the highest order.
I first came across Anolik’s work in 2019 when she published a riveting oral history of the writers who studied at Bennington College in the 1980s. In the Bennington piece, we witness Anolik’s modus operandi: prolific interviewing, a wry wit and a penchant for both myth-making and myth-destroying. In Didion & Babitz, these Anolik signatures are on show again. Here we are treated to a titillating and savage rereading of the decades-long relationship between Didion and Babitz.
Nine years older than Babitz and far more successful, Didion was responsible for the publication of Babitz’s first short story. She also championed Babitz’s career in other ways, until the two fell out. Anolik maintains that the antagonistic dynamic between Babitz and Didion is the key to understanding both their oeuvres – they were each other’s “shadow selves”, she argues. After reading the book, I’m unconvinced that Didion thought about Babitz very much at all, but Babitz certainly thought about Didion. This imbalance is itself telling.
Anolik knew Babitz personally, interviewing her over the last decade of her life. These conversations are gold – Babitz had a knack for eviscerating one-liners. Anolik does not pretend a biographer’s critical distance: she is explicitly “Team Babitz”. “I’ve picked my side: Eve’s,” she admits. Her aim is to resuscitate the legend of Babitz, pitting her as the vivacious, authentic counterpart to Didion’s cold, sexless calculation. In some ways, Anolik has already achieved this: her 2014 feature on Babitz for Vanity Fair resulted in a widespread reassessment of Babitz’s legacy and saw Babitz’s out-of-print works republished, her star celebrated. But in Didion & Babitz, Anolik has new material: the book begins in 2021 with Anolik finding a fresh stack of Babitz’s unsent letters. Anolik analyses these letters with a fine-tooth comb, attempting to psychoanalyse Babitz’s neuroses as she narrates her life story and closely reads her works.
What emerges is a curious – but undeniably captivating – assemblage of gossip, hypothesis and literary criticism. Some may find Anolik’s writing style tiring – this is a text full of knowing asides, of winks to the reader – but I had a ball. Do I believe the gossip? When it’s such fun, who cares?
Atlantic, 352pp, $34.99
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on December 7, 2024 as "Didion & Babitz".
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